I fear that my beloved America is on the fast track to second-nation-statushood (I know, that word doesn’t exist. I just made it up). The 5:00pm news report (Radio 880am, WCBS in NYC) had a piece on the U.S. President’s speech on education that is to be given next Tuesday during school time and is to be directed to children. Fifty years ago, when I was still in elementary school, if Dwight Eisenhower had come on the radio to talk about education, you can bet your boots that not one person would have objected. Everyone would have been tuned in for the broadcast. For gosh sakes, we’re talking the President of the United States. Our generation was of a mind to believe that the President should be given the respect that the elected leader of the most powerful country on the face of the earth deserved. In fact, we Americans were proud of the fact that we had never lowered ourselves to the second world status that the once mighty British had as was evident from their press-run-amok reports of parliamentary failings and royal family bloopers. Yes, that’s right, the same Britain that once “ruled the waves”, that mighty empire whose territories spanned the globe and upon whom “the sun never sets”. Yep, “that one” (to turn a McCainian phrase). Oh, they’re good as a backup when America needs a “known” representative to give credence to a coalition of the “just” in wars against Evil but when it comes to real moxie, America is the land of the free and the home of the brave and our institutions and beliefs are rock solid.
Wow, what’s all that got to do with the President’s up and coming speech on education?, you ask. Well, as the radio report went on, it indicated that there is “some parent” who has objected to his child hearing what the President of the United States has to say about education. The “parent’s” objection was stated in an audio clip where the “parent” makes the verbal assertion that we must remember that “when Castro took over Cuba, the first thing he did was to make an address to the children….”
Excuse me! What is the agenda of a radio station that would even bother to place the audio file of an unidentified “parent” making a claim that is pure unsupported opinion? Who is this parent who wishes to shield the precious ears of his child from the statements of the President of the United States? And why is it that a man, duly elected by the voting citizens of the United States cannot be afforded the respect that his position deserves?
Our president, like the leaders of that mighty Britain years ago, all of a sudden has found himself in a world that has changed from what it was just 11 months ago. Transparency in government has brought with it equal access and attention to all parties that, in a time of stress and economic crisis, creates the illusion that position no longer demands nor deserves respect.
The thirty or so years following Britain’s loss of its mighty empire were the grist from which sprang some of the best comedy the world has ever seen or heard. Perhaps, America is headed for a very funny time. Or, perhaps not. Perhaps a darker time is coming as was envisioned by Boutros Boutros-Ghali (in July 1996): “In so many spheres, the political leaders no longer have real sovereignty of decision making. But they have the idea that they themselves can still resolve the central questions. I mean, they have only the fancy, only the illusion that this is so”(p.954, History in Quotations by M.J. Cohen and John Major, Copyright 2008). It would seem that Mr. Boutros-Ghali would have a point when even the President of the United States cannot make a speech on such a benign issue as education without public comparison of his actions with those of a third-world Communist state.
